Guidance for NGOs?

Guidance for NGOs?

The authorities are reportedly drafting a decree on the
guidance of this country's non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
According to Coordinating Minister for Political Affairs and
Security Soesilo Soedarman, the NGOs "have not been guided
properly."

Although the nature and stipulations of the decree have not
yet been made clear to the public, the leaders of some NGOs are
already questioning whether such a move is needed at all and
voicing concern about how much freedom the government's new
policy will allow them.

The NGOs are concerned the government will classify them as
mass organizations, which have to register with the Ministry of
Home Affairs for legalization, even though they are non-profit
organizations having no membership system. Unlike mass
organizations, the establishment of all NGOs is based on
notarized acts, which are registered at local district courts.

The NGOs also are actively questioning how the planned
regulation will be implemented amid the much heralded trend
toward political openness.

The perceived need for such guidance on the part of the
authorities is apparently the result of the uneasy relationship
that has developed between the government and some NGOs.

It seems that some of the NGOs are perceived as having crossed
over the thin line between openness and undue criticism, making
the authorities uncomfortable with their clamoring over human
rights and the environment. The issue of human rights is perhaps
the most sensitive of the two because it is closely related to
the matter of political stability. And the fact that some NGOs
have been cooperating with foreign organizations has made their
relationship with the authorities even tenser.

NGOs are not a local phenomenon. In recent years they have
become some sort of international necessity, especially in
countries where sound socio-political systems are still being
developed.

In Indonesia the NGOs have been born from the wombs of a
political format and a social structure, which many people,
notably members of the younger generation, feel have not provided
enough opportunities for them to participate in the county's
modernization programs.

Because NGOs have grown up from the grassroots and government
policy and its tendency toward pragmatism has come from above,
there have occasionally been differences in the approaches of the
two parties toward what are meant to be mutually beneficial
development efforts. The resulting situation has unavoidably
pushed the two into a cycle of suspicion and eventually onto a
collision course.

Although some NGOs have a strong habit of producing little
more than political statements, to accuse all of the existing
NGOs of being ill-intentioned is not only absurd, but also
groundless.

There are some 2,000 organizations here which can be defined
as NGOs, most of which carry little, if any, political weight,
thus having negligible ability to even begin to disturb the
stability of the nation.

In that light it seems self indulgent on the part of the
authorities to hang onto an excessive fear of the existence of
NGOs.

This is particularly so when we observe the fact that there
are NGOs which have helped expand the public's awareness of the
importance of law and justice, of the need to preserve the
environment, of the importance of the fight against poverty and
of the need to improve the welfare of villagers. All of these are
efforts supportive of the government's own drive to improve the
overall well being of the entire populous.

Hopefully the authorities will be generous enough to continue
to give the NGOs the opportunity to air their opinions and do
what good they can because these groups are capable of helping
the government make its development programs a success.